When someone does something so bad for so long, they actually can get better at it. I am (God, I hate to admit this) now un-muting the TV when I see one of these PriceLine commercials come on.

What was once too horrible to witness has now actually become interesting. Shatner obviously not only has no shame, but he must have a sense of humor. I realize that I'm out on a very small limb here, but I'm laughing my ass off at . . . / . . . with this guy as he rakes in gazillions in stock options from this dot.com enterprise of his.

When he looks right in the camera and ends the most recent ad with, "Dog?!" I'm in tears. How can something so wrong be so right?

He went on to great guest work in such television series as Rod Serling's Twilight Zone: He was in the famous, black and white, episode of the monster on the plane wing--now re-done in color with John Lithgow in the Shatner role.

William Shatner is not the first Canadian to take on the role of American, so well, and so woodenly, that we think him a ham. Nor is he the last.

In fairness to Bill, as an actor he's had to work with a lot of bad material. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan showed me a side of Shatner that I did not think existed. It was a strong script, with the serious human issues of aging and deathunderpining the strong action plot.

Bill showed a real empathy for Kirk's aging, for his feeling that time had passed him by. Maybe Bill felt it too, but regardless it was one of the few times I really *believed* in Kirk as a character. He was real, he was three dimensional. It's the only Star Trek movie I'll watch over again (except for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which is really a movie that happens to have Star Trek characters in it, more than a "Star Trek movie" per se. )

None of which forgives the awful Star Trek V ... but given decent material to work with, I do think Bill can, or at least could, act.

Also, the brief "Nightmare at 20,000 feet" homage with John Lithgow when Bill first appeared on 3rd Rock from the Sun made me laugh - credits to the writers more than Bill, nonetheless a great moment.

Incidentally, this reminds me of another Star Trek actor, Jonathan Frakes - with a good script, he can be quite good, as several Riker-focussed TNG episodes attest - but with a bad script, he's horrible.

King Henry The Fifth
Elegy For The Brave
Theme From Cyrano
Mr. Tambourine Man
Hamlet
It Was A Very Good Year
Romeo And Juliet
How Insensitive (Insensatez)
Spleen
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
The Transformed Man

In addition to his acting and directing work, Shatner has also authored and co-authored a best-selling series of science fiction books called Tek, which later became a series on Canadiantelevision. He has also written several Star Trek-themed novels.

If you haven’t already heard about it, we are missing some wigs and hair pieces.

Bill Shatner borrowed all four of his hair pieces when we finished shooting. There are two new ones and two old ones. The new ones are worth approximately $200 apiece and the two old ones are worth approximately $100 a piece. Should “Star Trek” go again next season, this no doubt means that we will have to construct new hair pieces again for Bill because he will have used both the old ones and the new ones to such an extent that they will not be photographable. This I guarantee, since it has happened to us before.

Excerpted from a memo reprinted in Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry by David Alexander, 1994.

It's a ska song. Just one verse, sung twice--once before the instrumental break, once after. The Scofflaws make it great, though: trumpets or trombones blare the distinctive woop! woop! woop! of the Enterprise's siren. A low horn plays the uncanny rumble of the engine room. Orders are shouted to Scotty. The up-tempo portion sounds like a quintessential ska tune or maybe a game show theme song from the seventies. The slow part during the verses is more like a reggae tune--not the kind of tune you'd ordinarily pair with Star Trek lyrics. But until they release a dance remix of the theme to Reading Rainbow about Geordi LaForge, well... this is all you've got. This, and a sad collection of VHS tapes full of priceline.com commercials.

Published by Brian O'Sullivan (BMI), available on many ska collections, including the Scofflaws' albums Ska in Hi-Fi, and Scofflaws LIVE! Vol. 1. It is the eleventh song on both albums. Permission to use lyrics applied for, not yet received; lyrics comprise less than 250 words.